Super Movies! The one with Sylvester Stallone

 

Title: Judge Dredd

What Year?: 1995

Classification: Runnerup/ Evil Twin

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been continuing to debate whether to let this feature follow the others of my original 3 into retirement. That has brought me to the question not just of how much I would still want to do, but how likely it is that anything I haven’t thought of would present itself for inclusion here. It so happened that in the lead-up to this review, I had a case in point fall in my lap. It’s a movie that I had seen and given some consideration, but probably wouldn’t have gotten back to if I hadn’t discovered it available for free during a stretch of spare time. That in itself should be enough of an introduction to the movie itself, a very odd film that never quite reached obscurity or infamy, which happens to have ties to my previous review. I present Judge Dredd, the authorized adaptation of a comic that sued the makers of Hardware.

Our story begins with a standard text crawl introducing us to the world of the “third millennium”, where most of the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland while most of the human population has crowded into enormous city-states. In short order, we meet the Judges, heavily armed enforcers with the means and authority to punish evildoers, with their most distinguished member being Dredd. During the first altercation, Dredd meets a newcomer lady cop named Barbara and Herman, a hapless ex-con who quickly ends up busted again when a band of lawbreakers hole up in his apartment. Meanwhile, a mysterious escaped convict is conspiring with the petty officials of the city to seize greater power than they already have with some long-shelved projects. When the escapee murders two officials with a Judge’s self-arming gun, Dredd is quickly convicted of the crime and sent into exile, where he is stranded in the wastes along with Herman. It’s up to the unlikely pair to make their way back into the city, while the Judges are decimated by an adversary from Dredd’s own past. Can the Judge restore order? And what will be the price?

Judge Dredd was a 1995 sci fi/ action film from Hollywood Pictures, based on characters first featured in the comic 2000 AD. The film was directed by Danny Cannon from a script by William de Souza and Terminator cowriter William Wisher. Sylvester Stallone was cast in the lead role, following successful appearances in Demolition Man and Cliffhanger, with Diane Lane as Barbara, Armand Assante as the villain Rico, and Rob Schneider as Hermann.  The soundtrack was written by Alan Silvestri, known for Back to the Future and Predator (see also… Mac And Me?), after attempts to recruit Jerry Goldsmith fell through. The finished film was distributed in the US by Buena Vista. It struggled at the box office, ultimately earning $113 million against a budget of up to $90M. The film also failed to find “cult” success of otherwise comparable films, including Demolition Man. In 2012, an independent adaptation Dredd was released, featuring Karl Urban and Lena Headey, which many reviewers have preferred for quality and faithfulness to the comic.

For my experiences, what stands out in my memory is that the present film came out at the retrospective peak of the 1990s superhero movie wave, about the same time as Batman Forever, which we really, honestly liked at the time.  The collapse that followed is invariably blamed on Batman And Robin, but on consideration, the present movie did plenty of harm. It’s all the more telling that it had less immediate success and long-term influence  than works with less direct connections to the source material, including not only Hardware but Robocop. Meanwhile, when I did first look at this one, it was around the same time I looked at the 2012 movie, which I considered a little too late and simply too different to compare here. Then for the present review, I watched it first in a binge with other material I was reviewing, then again to adhere to my own rules after it became clear I wasn’t getting this done on the original timetable. My reaction at every turn could be the words on my tombstone: Not bad… but…

Moving forward, all the pros come from the well-realized world, which by all means includes the ensemble cast. To begin with, we have an impressive range of settings and environments with characters who are well-matched to them. The most impressive is a detour to the “cursed earth”, where we meet a clan of cyberpunk rednecks complete with an amped-up bruiser with a dial for his modified brain. Close behind is the lab where the finale takes place, stereotypically but effectively white and brightly lit and inhabited by a subtly fearsome scientist. There’s further nice touches with the tech, such as the self-protecting, voice-activated guns, a malfunctioning bike, and the not-quite-comical killer robot. The one thing arguably missing, and the one point I will draw comparison to the 2012 version, is that there are few if any scenes or situations that create a sense of claustrophobia. As a result, the most harrowing possibilities of arcology turned dystopia- criminals and rebels hunkered down in their own apartments, against authorities who control every exit and the utilities- are only explored in the later treatment.

The cons come in for me when I compare it to Demolition Man, something I find much more applicable than any other work to rise from the comics. This also figured directly in my classification; I could count it a “runnerup” to any number of movies, but it is to Demolition Man that I find it a true Evil Twin. I don’t suggest that one influenced the other- the whole point of the Runnerup category is that coincidences do happen- but there is more than enough for comparisons that are almost entirely unfavorable. The instructive contrast is that, outside of a few good one-liners (my favorite, “They got roasted… but the theory is sound…”), the present movie is strangely devoid of humor, even of the “unintentional” variety. Then the common denominator is the presence of Stallone, yet here it is night and day. If there was one thing Demolition Man did right, it was providing Stallone with a nuanced and often vulnerable character. Dredd, on the other hand, rarely if ever manifests emotional depth beyond his fanatical dedication to the law, and ultimately comes out virtually where he started. The strangest part is that Stallone seems to rub off on his costars, especially Assante, who seems to deliberately mimic his delivery, perhaps to foreshadow certain developments, but also with an unpleasant suggestion of mockery.

That already brings me to the “one scene”, and I’m going with one I didn’t really notice until the second viewing for this review. After an opening shootout in Hermann’s apartment (by far the most effective action sequence), Dredd wanders down the corridor with Barbara. They encounter a bot we have already sighted once or twice, an unthreatening nonanthropomorphic mech that mostly rolls along announcing the virtues of “recycled food”. (I’m definitely glad that wasn’t explained any further…) Suddenly, the judge blocks the robot’s path. There’s a surreal clash of personalities between the pair, as Dredd solemnly recites his warning to prepare to be judged, while the bot gives an officious warning that he is obstructing its state-sanctioned duties. The funny thing is, I really didn’t remember exactly how this scene goes, even in the extra viewing, and you can absolutely believe the character would shoot a completely harmless mech for some imagined offense. Instead, he finally pulls open the carapace, for a payoff just a little too good to reveal. It’s by no means atypical for the movie, but still a little better that the movie as a whole ever gets, just another disappointing glimpse of what might have been.

In closing, what I find myself reflecting on is the real nature and shape of the late 1980s-90s superhero “boom”, or boomlet. There’s a case to be made that it was Robocop as much as Batman that started the wave, and one can certainly further consider Judge Dredd as a symptom if not the cause of its end. In full hindsight, the successes of the Batman franchise never benefited anyone but the makers of Batman movies, yet even the illusion of a profitable trend was enough to sustain the ecosystem of superhero movies for a while. On the darker side, there can be no doubt that if Batman And Robin hadn’t burst the bubble, it would have burst nonetheless. (Perhaps, at least, Mystery Men would have made its money back.) The deeper lesson is that while nothing lasts forever, very few things entirely die, either, and that makes my choice perhaps more apt than I planned. If the future of the superhero genre seems uncertain now, history says we have been through worse before. And with that, I’m done.

Retrobots Revisited: McDonald's Transformers!!!

 

In planning out what I wanted to do this month, my big decision was that it was time to do some robot posts. That left me with a pretty short list of new and old material I hadn't gotten to before. The one that came to the top was old friends from way back. Here are the Changeables, possibly the most awesome Happy Meal toys and among the greatest Transformers knockoffs ever. To get this going, here's a lineup of the ones I actually had back when.

The start of all this is back in 1987, when McDonald's released a series of 6 transforming-robot toys called Changeables. As seen above, they were simple, robust, and boldly simple design. Between my brother and I, we got one or two each of the ones shown here, the McNuggets, the Egg McMuffin and the Quarter Pounder bot. They very quickly became among my favorite bots, often mixed in with other Happy Meal toys. For one reason or another, we missed out on the rest of the original set, though I had looked enviously at the artwork and advertisements for them. (See BattleGrip, previously my best source for Tonka Play People, for a look at the original Happy Meal box art.) What surprises me more is that I didn't get any of the 2nd series in 1988, which featured 6 new bots plus reissues of 2 of the originals (which I will get to in a moment). I did sight these later bots in the second-hand stores, eventually mixed in with the dino-themed Series 3, but I never bought any for reasons I didn't quite analyze. In hindsight, they simply weren't the same. I did remain interested, however, in getting the ones I missed the first time around. Eventually, many years later but still a long time ago, I found all the ones I didn't have all together. Here's the lineup of the rest.

As seen here, the rest of the set were a Big Mac, Fries and a Shake, the first 2 of which were revived with Series 2. What interested me was that, while the Big Mac had pretty much the same "plan" as the ones I had all along, the Fries and the Shake were quite different. The fry bot is just kind of odd, almost troll-like, while the drink bot is downright towering, to the point that it looks even taller than it actually is in a lineup. (What I really can't account for is that the McNuggets bot is taller than all the rest except this one.) I was happy to pick them up, and have continued to revisit them regularly. Here's a lineup of the set in alt mode.

Of course, in rational hindsight, this doesn't really make much sense, if any. They could kind of blend in, if they were full-sized, which is more than can be said for a lot of alt modes. On the other hand, they would still be small. Then the big problem is, they look like things that are edible, which isn't much of a survival trait. That wouldn't be too much of a problem if their adventures were inside a McDonald's; after all, most people who saw unattended food on a table or counter wouldn't just grab a bite. (Clearly, the best disguise of all would be a burger with one bite taken out of it...) Sooner or later, however, either someone is going to try to eat them or just throw them in the trash, though that would certainly make for an adventure in itself.

Meanwhile, there's the further question of how these things age. For the most part, they hold up very well. The arm joints are solid to this day, while the "waist" articulation has gotten a little creaky on the McNuggets. The only one to have trouble from an early date is the McMuffin. For some reason, his design has the body raise only halfway, which looked vaguely cool on the original. On the one I could find, however, it has long since worn out to the point that it simply won't stay up at all. Here's a closeup of how he would have looked in his prime.

And here's a rear view of four of them. It shows certain problematic aspects of the designs, but also just how well-constructed they are.

And why not one more pic with the Truckstop Queen and Ken R. Wampa? As I was saying, looking delicious isn't a survival trait...

With that, I'm ready to bring another meandering memory to an end. As a bonus, here's links for a Toy Galaxy video and a commercial for Series 1. That's all for now, more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The one that followed up Toy Story

 

Title: A Bug’s Life

What Year?: 1998

Classification: Runnerup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

I have previously commented that when I very first tried writing outside my misbegotten fiction, the very first thing I tried was reviewing animation. That makes animation a big part of the DNA of all my various review features. A major reason why I haven’t come back to it is that I have a broad enough interest to cover literally a hundred years of the field, whereas most of my features have remained focus on the relatively narrow timeframe of 1970s-‘80s. I haven’t yet decided if this is the feature that will break that mold, but I do anticipate relative variety. For this particular review (indeed for my lineup for the coming week), I have one of a few movies that popped up incidentally. As a bonus, it just happens that it was about as old when I first tried animation reviews as those mostly lost reviews are now. With that, I present A Bug’s Life, the second Disney/ Pixar movie and the one that made the studio’s reputation without getting thanks for it.

Our story begins with a colony of anthropomorphic ants completing the harvest. In the process, we meet Princess Atta and Flik, a drone with new ideas. Things take a dark turn early as we discover that the harvest is an offering for Hopper, the leader of a post-apocalyptic gang of grasshoppers. When Flik’s new invention knocks the harvest in the drink, the colony must choose between resistance or starvation. Flik gets approval for an expedition to the wider world to look for allies, and to everyone’s surprise returns alive with a motley band of  bugs for hire. But the newcomers aren’t what they seem, and Hopper is out for blood. The drone and the circus bugs must use brains and brawn to save the queen from the raiders. Can they lead the colony to victory, or is it the ants’ lot to serve the larger insects forever?

A Bug’s Life was the second feature film from Disney and Pixar, following the success of Toy Story in 1995. The story was loosely based on the Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai, previously adapted as The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond The Stars. It also had controversial similarities to Dreamworks’ Antz, an apparently independent project released the same year. The voice cast was led by Dave Foley as Flik and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as Princess Atta, with Kevin Spacey as Hopper, David Hyde Pierce as Slim and Phyllis Diller (see… The Boneyard?) as the ant queen. Other cast included the emerging “regulars” John Ratzenberger, Brad Garrett and Richard Kind. The film was a commercial success with a $363 million box office, comparable to the $373M gross of Toy Story, though its much higher $120M budget reduced its overall profitability. It would become the earliest Disney/ Pixar film not to receive a sequel. Critics increasingly characterized the movie as either weaker than other Disney/ Pixar films or less successful with audiences. The characters of A Bug’s Life were featured in a gag reel for Toy Story 2.

For my experiences, what this film has stirred up in my mind is the question, is the “failed” or “forgotten” Disney movie simply a myth? I’ve been doing this long enough to notice that people are always able to point to Disney films that were in some sense unsuccessful in their own time; if you really do the math, even Fantasia was a devastating failure when it actually came out. (See also Allegro Non Troppo…) For the present movie in particular, we have possibly the reverse. I was there; I went to the theater and bought the tape with my own money; I loved it; most importantly, I never heard anyone else say otherwise. So why is this the one with the reputation of a failure? Going in, I went so far as to watch Toy Story 1 and 2 for context, which just made it it more baffling that this isn’t considered one of Pixar’s very best.

Turning to the movie itself, what stands out front and center is the absolutely beautiful visuals, certainly far ahead of the original Toy Story. There’s a sense of vastness that is never quite intimidating, yet there is also attention to small details, from pebbles to blades of grass to beads of dew. What’s most easily underestimated is the attention to scale, which contributes to many of the best moments. The grasshoppers tower over the ants; Dim the beetle is even more enormous; and all are dwarfed by the kaiju-like bird. (And don’t get me started on the babies…)Then there’s two more things that stand out to me. First, human artifacts appear sparingly, usually in settings removed from the colony, just often enough to give some perspective on the bugs’ world. Second, there is the water physics, which should be outright distracting. We repeatedly see things that make absolutely no sense outside the bugs’ scale from dew drops that can be picked up like soda cans to a rainstorm that looks like the asteroid field of Empire Strikes Back. Yet, I have never found it to divert from the story, nor have a seen it raised as a criticism. I find this all the more impressive after doing my own stories of small-sized civilizations. It’s extremely hard to create such a world without either unquestioned assumptions or excessive explanations, yet this movie presents its world on the bugs’ terms without acting like it’s trying.

With all that said, it is perhaps part of the problem that I haven’t said much about the story or characters. The obvious strengths rise simply from the choice of source material, with problems in execution even then. Flik is very likable, enough to heighten the disappointment when he tries to navigate the devolving situation with deceit, while the other ants are suitably uniform in their adherence to tradition and justifiable fear. The grasshoppers, as noted, are suitably intimidating, without ever descending into illogical supervillainy. On the contrary, they are unsettlingly human in their pettiness, with only Hopper offering enough of a long view to justify greater excesses. By comparison, the circus bugs are the weak link, for reasons that are difficult to explain. To me, the most telling issue is that the story plays up the angle that they are failures even as a circus act, where a more nuanced treatment might have shown their skills actually paying off in a combat/ survival situation. In fact, we get a payoff from moments of relative competence, particularly the early confrontation with the bird and the mantis’s magic act performed under Hopper’s scrutiny, but they are exceptions to the comic tone.

That leaves the “one scene”, and the one that is virtually unavoidable is the finale, or rather the lead-in to it. After Flik’s schemes are played out, he is left at the mercy of Hopper and his remaining goons. Of course, there’s a great interplay between the defiant protagonist and the monologuing villain in full view of the colony. To me, at least, it’s the reactions of the onlookers that have the most impact, and ultimately make the story’s point. It’s especially worthwhile to watch and hear the clear anxiety of Hopper’s brother and second-in-command, voiced by Kind, as Flik confronts the leader with the same arguments he made to his own troops. Then what gets this sequence the slot is really just one shot I’ve always suspected most viewers never noticed; As the ants advance, the grasshopper literally leaps out of his own exoskeleton, leaving the translucent husk to bounce over the backs of the charging horde. It’s another moment that should be distractingly odd if you don’t know the Arthropoda, done so naturally it doesn’t stand out at all.

In conclusion, I come back not to the rating but the question of this film’s legacy and especially its bearing on Disney. I could easily go through several posts ranting about the state of Disney and especially the industry “establishment” that keeps giving their weak to middling offerings more money and accolades than the finest work of any other crew. (See Corpse Bride for the first half of that vent.) In the proverbial light of day, the most tenacious piece of hype to attach itself to Disney, and the most dangerous if their own people ever come around to believing it, is that failure is somehow unusual. On discerning analysis, their real record is that of taking real risks, succeeding often enough to take their losses on the chin, and keeping their older works accessible enough for audiences to change their minds. With that context in mind, A Bug’s Life is only a “failure” in the sense that it didn’t leave a trail of merchandise and debatable sequels. (If it comes to that, if you really want to talk about an undeservedly “forgotten” film, look at Antz, which I very much remember seeing.) The real difference was that even at that late date, sequels to Disney movies, however successful, were still very rare, at least outside the direct-to-video market. Perhaps this was a movie that got lost in the transition; perhaps it was just as well that this one last time, Disney left well enough alone. What we should be grateful for is that we have it on hand to watch, instead of waiting 5-10 years for the Disney vault to open. With that, I’m done for another day.

Mystery Monday: Imperial rubber monsters sequel

 

It's The start of my first full week of the month, and I decided to hold off on the movie reviews. That left this slot for Mystery Monday, and I was reminded it's been a while since I had a "real" mystery (compare the mystery red guy that started all this). It's been quite a while since I covered something that posed a challenge even for my knowledge and investigative abilities. (I will freely admit, there is one case still unsolved!) However, I have said all along that there are mysteries great and small, and it just happens I have a few loose ends from my last dino post, which covered the infamous products of Imperial. In the course of that post, I considered some additional material, far enough in to take a number of pics. I decided, however, that I already had enough, and some of these things didn't quite fit. To get this going, here are the ones that were closest to getting in before, a pair of genuine prehistoric animals including a dino.

Of these two, the dino is by a wide margin the one I've had longest, and I suppose I wouldn't have hesitated to include it with my Imperial lineup if it had been the only one already in my collections. It's essentially the same style and material as other Imperial dinos, usually assigned a comparable date of 1985. The cat, on the other hand, was its own thing. It's made of softer and probably cheaper material, almost on par with a "bigmouth" dino. What was even more striking was the quite late date of 1989. The icing on the cake of wonkiness is those ears, which look like they belong on a dog rather than a prehistoric predator. Here's a closeup.

Meanwhile, the one I've really been holding out for is a find I made at a collectible store that closed a few years back. I long debated putting it in a dino post. Obviously, it's not a realistic dinosaur, but neither were the patchisaurs and generic Godzilla. It's still in the same style as plenty of dinos, particularly the "big mouth" types. The real counterarguent is just how goofy this thing is. By comparison, even the patchisaurs could be vaguely menacing. This guy, however, is so completely unthreatening that the least of the patchis (probably the rust monster) would laugh at him. Here's a few pics of him in full glory, for lack of a better word, with the Imperial Tyrannosaurus.

"Well, at least you didn't get knocked off by the worst GI Joe set..."

This creature was originally made for a knockoff genre I had previously investigated, intended as unauthorized "riding" animals for He Man and other fantasy/ sci fi toys. I further determined that it was part of an actual line, originally dubbed Dragons And Daggers. Somewhat later, they tried to shift to science fiction with Robots, Lasers And Galaxies, which was really many of the same creatures with more technological-looking accessories. (See 2 Warps To Neptune here, here and here.)Here's a pic of the beast with Sidekick Carl and the giant Tonka lady aka the Nine-Foot Woman to show how it would have worked.

"Could you please stop trying to eat my boyfriend? Apart from anything else, he's made from a lot of stuff that's not edible..."

And here he is with the ca 70 mm Marx knights and Timmee fantasy figures.

"A king's duty is to command from a safe distance..."

It was this one that gave me an angle on the whole lot. This got me thinking, were any other beasts released as mounts? Were there any repurposed when the fantasy craze died down? I was especially suspicious about the sabertooth, which would have been hitting the shelves just a little after Masters of the Universe went through its prolonged and painful death. Alas, I found no hard data to show it was released in this fashion. The real test, however, was first-hand experimentation. For history, yeah, let's go with that. Here's the beast with a couple of my very few remaining TMNT figures.

Ironically, judging from this test, the dino that was made independent of the "riding beast" niche works about as well at the cat which would have been made at the tail end of it. It's further apparent that late lines like the Ninja Turtles offered decent compatibility with holdovers from He Man's heyday. Here's one more for kicks.

And then there was one more thing to try, a rematch with the Gas Station Duchess and the Imperial tyrannosaur. I think Connie might be ready for a long-term relationship...

"How did T. rex mate? Asking for a friend..."

And with that, I'm wrapping this up. As always, more to come!

Fiction: The Adventures of Sidekick Carl part 13!

 Just getting to the last post of the "off" week, decided on a catchup installment of Sidekick Carl. It's mostly crunching exposition, which is really what a lot of the story has been so far. I hope to step things up in the next few installments. As usual, here's the first and previous installments, plus one more I decided I had to revise. More to come, hopefully soon.

The Toxo Warrior had turned off the TV and turned to a magazine. He glanced between the dragon-like head and a magazine. Finally, he set the magazine down. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

“You may speak,” the head replied. “I may answer.”

“I want to know, why send that freaky shaper after Sidekick Carl?” he said. “I mean, we fought him, but it was nothing personal then, and there’s nothing personal now. And I know all about what happened to you. You were where we found you since Sidekick Carl was still all human. So, why’s he a big deal to you either way?”

The teeth of the dragon shimmered before it spoke. “His creation was the result of plans I set in motion long ago,” it said. “He knows more than he thinks he knows, and he holds secrets he still does not understand, secrets that could be used against us.”

“But nobody knows what we’re doing,” the Toxo Warrior said. “We already went out on a limb getting the chemicals. Going after him just means more heat that could come back to us."

“The risk is minor compared to the threat he poses, though that is small enough,” the dragon said. “They can try to trace our operative, whether he succeeds or fails, but it will be chasing ghosts. In the time it would take to find us, our plans will come to fruition, and it will not matter what they know.”

“Yeah,” the Toxo Warrior said, “they all said that.” Then he threw a tarp over the head.

* * *

 

Carl and Dana ended up in bed, though they did nothing they had not done before. He had asked her if she wanted to, and she had answered, “No, but I want to know we could.”

Now, she lay next to him, wholly unclothed, shifting and twisting. Finally, Carl  asked, “What’s the matter?”

She looked at him and sighed. “I want you to tell me, about them,” she said. “Who were the Toxo Warriors? And what really happened?”

Carl sighed. “All right, I owe you that,” he said. “The thing is, nobody knows when they started. The first we knew about was burglaries, weird ones. It was chemicals and specialized lab equipment, things ordinary criminals wouldn’t know what to do with. They also stole from construction sites, even did some of their work there. The first fatalities we knew about was at one of those. A couple of them were old friends of Constructor’s. A week after that, they did the worst thing they ever did. It was a chemical plant that did work for the military, with over a hundred workers inside. They released a gas that killed 53 men outright. Another 9 died later, and a lot more got hurt. The thing is, they didn’t take anything. There really wasn’t anything worth taking. From what we know now, it was all over one chemical, not important, but it had a name that sounded like something else.”

“My God,” Dana said. Her voice was soft, almost uninflected.

Carl nodded. “That was what they were like. Smart, cunning, lucky as Hell, but very, very careless. Constructor said as soon as we heard about it, they had to be stopped. It took another month before we found them. They were at a construction site, like he thought, doing some kind of experiment in the unfinished building. They had built their own combat mech, and they rigged a booby trap that was a lot more dangerous, like that Poe story about the pendulum. It flattened me, literally. Constructor got through, past their gas, smashed the  mech, and pulled out the power cables for their experiment. They got away in good time, then they tried to drive off in a big dump truck that was on site. The only problem was, they turned the wrong way, right into their own booby trap. By then, Constructor had found the trigger, and he set it off. Something they were hauling caught fire, so we had to back off. A lot of people said they had to be dead. Constructor never believed it.”

He rolled onto his side to face Dana. “Things were quiet after that. It was two years before we got the trail, again. This time, it wasn’t just stealing things. They had hacked a few different companies, at least that was what the executives all said, and started funneling money and materials into a shell company. It was enough to build their own lab, with a good security system plus a few guards. We watched the place for a week before we found a back door. I wasn’t even sure it was them, but Constructor never doubted. We got in, and sure enough, it was them. Only, they got the drop on us. One of them had a gas canister, the other had a flame thrower that looked dangerous enough to hurt me. They could have killed us, but we were close to their experiment. Plus, the one doing the talking wanted to know if the Agency was on the way.”

He gazed into her eyes. “So, here’s what really happened. The one who had the flame thrower shifted to get a better aim. There was this backpack with a hose coming out. He bumped a little bottle on the shelf. It fell over and rolled off the shelf, into a bucket. Of water, as far as we ever knew.”

Dana covered her mouth. “What was it?”

Carl shook his head. “We didn’t know, we never knew. But like I told the convention crowd, we could see their eyes. We could tell, they knew they screwed up. They knew it was bad, very bad. They didn’t even try to fix it, they just ran. So did we. The rest…” He shook his head. “Like I said, the real investigators said nothing could have survived. They didn’t even mean alive, just… intact.”

Dana nodded. “Okay. Now, here’s the thing… You said they hired guards, right? So it wasn’t just the two working alone. Do you think someone else could have started over?”

Carl nodded, but then frowned. “The guards were caught and then cleared… most of them, at least,” he said. “They all said they were legitimate contractors who didn’t know what was going on. Of course, we never knew what they were doing either, so we couldn’t really argue. Some of them were probably clean, the rest would have been goons. Definitely not the kind to set off by themselves.”

Dana sat up, cinching the sheet around her. “What about those companies they stole from?” she said. “It doesn’t sound like they were really in the dark. I can tell you don’t think so.”

Carl shrugged. “If they did have anyone inside, it would have been mid-level, probably through a contractor,” he said. “We’d seen the same thing before and since. They weren’t as stable as the goons, and a lot less predictable. The usual common denominator was that they thought they deserved better than they got. There were a few who tried setting off on their own. The Raven might have started out that way; even with him in a body bag, they could never prove who he was. Still… I don’t see how anyone else could become the Toxo Warriors. Then again, whoever is out there is already doing things a bit different.”

Dana settled down again. “There’s one more thing,” she said. “’There’s something that man from the Agency knew, and you know, but neither of you said. He said the people they’re looking for stole a chemical that could hurt you. Except, that couldn’t be all, could it? So tell me, if you love me or you ever could… What would anyone be using that stuff for?”

Carl nodded again. “All right, you deserve to know,” he said. “Like Carter said, it’s a powerful acid. You could use it for etching, if you had to do very fine work, and it would double as a disinfectant. There’s really just one thing where you’d need both… and it’s manufacturing nanites.”

In the end, they did indeed do nothing they hadn’t done before, but they did no less. Afterward, when Dana was soundly and happily asleep, Carl rose. As he passed the kitchen window, he stopped and leaned back. From outside the window, two luminous discs throbbed, shifting from almost pink brightness to a dim blood-black that could have been put down to an afterimage created by a single lamp behind him. They were set in a barely visible silhouette, that only discernible when the light was dimmest, of a nearly circular head atop a neck and torso too subtly tapered to differentiate where one ended and the other began. It took a bare moment for Carl to take all of it in, and in that moment he snatched up a medium-sized knife from a pile of cutlery Dana had cleared out from a broken drawer. The next moment, the eyes flared brighter than before, so bright they seemed like one continuous band extending far to either side of the head. Then all that remained was indeed a lingering after image. Carl dropped the blade without moving an inch from where he stood. When he finally tried to do so, he had to look down before he realized that the knife had gone through his foot and into the floor.

 

And at that moment, not too far away, the Toxo Warrior who drove the truck hastily removed his gear. He climbed back in the truck, then drove up to a gate where he swiped a card to enter. A few minutes later, he made his way back to a car just a little more expensive than an ordinary worker could normally afford. When he looked up, there was not even a silhouette, only a gleam within the deeper darkness at the height of a human head. “I know you are,” a voice said. It was soft and oddly androgynous, without seeming mechanical. He showed no reaction as a figure emerged into the light, just far enough to reveal a figure clad entirely in black, complete with a nearly spherical helmet. “I want in.”

Featured Creature: The one that got a review of the soundtrack before the movie

 

Title: Deep Rising aka Octalus

What Year?: 1996 (filming)/ 1998 (release)

Classification: Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

In the course of my reviews, one thing that hasn’t happened often is the sense of recovering old territory. I normally have no trouble deciding whether something is of enough interest to review within what I’m working on at any given time. Once I have made that decision, I have almost always either set it aside or come back to it when my needs have changed enough to make it relevant. With this review, effectively a runoff from my Halloween lineup, I have finally reached a movie that I have covered before without finishing what I had to say, simply because I previously covered it outside of any of my review features. Now it’s time for the rematch, and this one definitely deserves another look, because as I said before, it’s awesome. Here is Deep Rising, a movie that got a post from me just for its soundtrack.

Our story begins with a text crawl about the unexplored depths of the ocean (except by the actual Captain Piccard), and the many ships lost at sea, followed by a menacing POV that moves from wrecks on the ocean floor to a flashy cruise ship. In short order we’re introduced to a rogues’ gallery of characters on the cruise ship and a junky ship on course to intercept, including a businessman named Canton, a temptress named Trillian, a tramp captain named Finnegan and a band of mercenaries who are taxing his no-questions-asked policy. We soon learn that the mercenaries are out to loot and sink it, but their own ship is heavily damaged in the process, and the cruise ship is deserted apart from Trillian, even though the lifeboats are still in place. After several of the mercs disappear, the businessman gives them the story: The ship has been invaded by predatory worms called Ottoia (otherwise believed to be 500 million years old and 6 inches long, which was big for the time) from 8 miles under the sea (about a mile deeper than the Marianas Trench, allegedly). To get out alive, Finnegan must stay one step ahead of the ravenous creatures on the already sinking ship. But the monsters may be more than the sum of their parts, and some of the rogues still have plans of their own!

Deep Rising was a 1998 release from Disney affiliate Hollywood Pictures, written and directed by Stephen Sommers. The film was shot in 1996, but received a delayed release for effects and other post-production work. The film starred Treat Williams (see Dead Heat) as Finnegan and Famke Jansen as Trillian, with Kevin J. O’Connor as comic relief Joey. The lead roles were reportedly offered to Harrison Ford and Claire Forlani (see Mystery Men), but only Forlani accepted before backing out prior to filming. The supporting cast included Wes Studi (also Mystery Men?), Cliff Curtis (The Meg) and Djimon Honsou (Amistad???) as the mercenaries. Creature effects were provided by Rob Bottin and ILM, while Jerry Goldsmith composed the soundtrack. The movie was an unquestioned commercial failure, earning a box office of $11.2 million against a $45M budget. Roger Ebert dismissed the film as “an Alien clone with a fresh paint job”, also noting possibly coincidental similarities to the films Anaconda and Hard Rain. Sommers directed The Mummy the following year, featuring O’Connor; 1999 also saw Curtis appear in the similar film Virus. Jerry Goldsmith continued to compose to the time of his death, with his last credit being for Looney Tunes Back In Action in 2003.

For my personal experiences, the real home truth here is that in my experience, reviewing my favorites rarely if ever works. Ask me to put together a “best” list, even from the cult-movie category, and it would really be downright boring (though at least Dawn of the Dead would be right at the top). It’s the obscure and notorious movies that suit my purposes on this blog. For this particular movie, I have known it from of old, from TV to VHS to the heavily-watched Blu Ray 2-pack I picked up the last time I was on the route to my first job. Yet, even a literal bomb like this feels a bit too “mainstream” by my standards, unprofitable, criticized and controversial but by no means neglected, let alone forgotten. When I chose to review the soundtrack, it very much reflected my priorities. I wanted to honor a composer I greatly admire; I felt no comparable need to praise a film that’s  already more popular and well-regarded than anyone could have dreamed when it came out. Now that I am coming back to it, I’m still not sure how far I can go without simply repeating what others have said many times over.

If there’s one thing I can say about this film, it’s that it’s all about small details. From the start, it’s a character-driven story with enough patience to push its set pieces back to the halfway mark. In the process, we learn the mannerisms and foibles of the rogues, especially Finnegan and Joey. (Studi’s hard-edged merc is the possibly underrated standout.) As things do get moving, the established atmosphere of dark humor, anxiety and dread continues to build through any number of little things: A dropped shoe; an incongruous bit of muzak, recapitulated later; a blast of steam; a jittery flashlight beam; a fatefully ejected clip; not to mention any number of one-liners. (My favorite: “If the hull’s impregnable, why are my feet wet?”) This approach is further reflected in the monster, beginning with old-school fleeting glimpses and building up  to the closeup of the eye of the central beast (I’m sure based on the ethereal Vampiroteuthis), which seems to function like the heart of a man o’war to the colonial tentacles that are the worms.

With that said, I still find it hard to give a further explanation of the film’s strengths, or for that matter its weaknesses. The most obvious issues lie in the wonky pacing of the first half, which as noted is fairly balanced against strong dialogue. Even here, there are moments of pure adrenaline, especially when the mercenaries climb their way onto the ship. It would also be easy to take issue with the pseudoscientific exposition, as I have in fun; in fact, I find it audacious enough to allow that it is informed exaggeration and willful hokum rather than the usual Hollywood laziness. Once the worms appear, the story is literally running and gunning, with an intriguing balance between the creatures and their prey. The terrifyingly rendered worms can be destroyed, and in some cases distracted, but once one appears, there are always more, pursuing until they catch their prey or encounter an obstacle they can’t tear through. It all keeps things running smoothly up to the finale, which I have come to find oddly awkward over time. It’s every bit as fun as it’s meant to be as the remaining protagonists race a jet ski through the flooded corridors while the ship goes up like a mesquite log soaked in gasoline and stuffed with gunpowder (I can’t help thinking Forlani could have done this better than Jansen), but it doesn’t quite fit with what is on the whole a subtle and surprisingly serious movie.

That leaves the “one scene”, and that in itself is exactly why movies I like this much are rarely suitable for my reviews. Out of wealth of material, the one that recommended itself independent of any other point I would want to make is just after the crew boards the cruise ship. They’re still together with Finnegan along as they burst into the casino, an environment already introduced at the opening of the movie. It’s a grim and foreboding scene, all the more so after seeing it in vibrant life, with tables overturned, chairs smashed and money, cards and chips scattered heedlessly. Even the actual mercenaries are too unnerved to gather the cash and go. As they survey the room warily, there’s a sudden crash, and they all open fire with their odd mini-Gatling guns. Finnegan finally calms them down enough to see that it’s just a light that fell from the ceiling. They are all superficially cheerful with relief… which is when at least two of them start shooting again. It’s a nuanced, amusing sequence that doesn’t break the mood of the story, and like every really good example, it represents what the movie does right rather than what could have been.

In closing, I truly have nothing more to add, unless it’s repeating what I said the first time I posted about this movie. Deep Rising is a truly definitive example of a movie that came out either too early or too late, and as such exactly what I mean by an Anachronistic Outlier. It has a distinctly “old-school” feel, even for when it came out, yet like many such films, it still anticipates developments that were well ahead, including the “modern” superhero movie. As I also discussed in detail, it was ultimately a film that the studio “system” wasn’t able or willing to market. The final result is a mirror image of the ill-fated ship: Founded in misjudgment, hopelessly bankrupt, and grandiose even in its death. Maybe it never stood a chance in its own time, but it has stood the test of time better than any number of by-the-numbers blockbusters. That would be enough to get my respect even if I didn’t already love it.

Movie Mania! Ghostbusters lineup

 

I'm just off my Halloween run, which I went through at one-a-weekday output while readership was crashing. Now I'm back to start my first "off week" lineup since summer, and I decided it was time to deal with some backlogged material. As it happens, I went to a showing of Ghostbusters over Halloween weekend, and while I was at the theater, I picked up something to add to a little collection I've been building up. Here's a profile pic of the  guy that started this.

Apparently, this is a character called Muncher from the upcoming sequel/ reboot Ghostbusters Afterlife, which I'm not even going to get started on. I sighted him on sale along with a decent Slimer and so-so Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. What got me interested was that the look was as much in line with the Ghostbusters cartoon as any incarnation of the movie franchise. I noticed a further resemblance to a tardigrade, which I knew about long before I caught wind of their current "meme" status. As a toy, it's well-made with a pleasant feel. There's some sense of articulation in the body, and he will kind of wiggle his arms if you squeeze him. The one thing I find off is that there are two pleats in the body that will almost implode. Whether this puts any strain on the toy remains to be seen. Here's one more pic from behind.

What this brought me back to is the Kenner Real Ghostbusters line. What I remember first and foremost is that as a kid, I was more impressed by the cartoon than the movie, though I only watched it occasionally. In further hindsight, I would still say that the show was better than the movie to whatever extent they can be compared. At the very least, it exceeded the standards of competing media vastly more than the movie ever could have, if only because it was the tail end of the animation "Dark Age", and unlike the movie, it was taken seriously enough for others to follow its example. By comparison, the toys were just strange, silly and random, yet they certainly looked fun, appealing, and exactly the kind of thing I was never going to get from anyone in my family. I watched them come and go, for a while naively trying to match them to the relatively few episodes I had seen. Eventually, I traded for exactly one, a particularly odd creature I undoubtedly still have but couldn't find on short notice. Meanwhile, the one that really stayed on my mind was this...

In a line with 10 increasingly gimmick-heavy waves, this was easily the most bizarre and the most inconceivable at any other time. It was called Fearsome Flush and originally released in 1989, not even that far into the run. I took notice when reissues of the Kenner line started appearing about a year ago. Even so, I would never have thought this would be among them until I saw it on the shelves a few months back. I promptly bought it, just to have an example. Here's a few more pics.

What I quickly determined when I examined this was that this worked by a sort of friction mechanism. If you push it, a set of wheels in the base will make the mouth open and shut. I quickly assessed this as a limitation on the play value, if any. Most action-gimmick toys, including others in this line, have a simple switch or trigger, for good reason. And in any event, how would a chase scene even work? If this thing didn't catch a victim by the backside in the first strike, then it's going to have to go through the door or the wall to pursue for any distance. What really stood out almost immediately is that this is yet another transforming toy where the "alt mode" is more useful than the "gimmick" (see the Rock Lords, and the Gobots movie). Action figure lines were always light on civilian equipment, and you certainly weren't going to see realistic plumbing fixtures in a GI Joe set. Alas, it quickly became clear that this was nowhere near the right scale for 3.75-4 in "standard:" figures. Here's some pics to show what I mean, and yes, I'm getting ahead of myself...

As seen above, the tank on this thing is higher than Sidekick Carl (though it might fit his girlfriend), and not a lot smaller than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It might work better with one of the larger figure lines, which were generally more suitable for a domestic scene anyway. As usual, I tried the Truckstop Queen, but even then, this doesn't look quite right.

Of course, her hips already have the range of motion of an arachnoid battle mech...

That brings us to the centerpiece, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Per the lore, this was one of the first two toys released for the Kenner line, the other being Slimer. This was one I really wanted back then, though I'm pretty sure I didn't really understand what he was supposed to be. Of course, the actual character was kaiju-sized, and was really just the form of the proto-Semitic entity Gozer which the Ghostbusters either killed or blew back into the interdimensional realm. Of course, this was ignored by the show and the toys, and the kids never cared. In any event, I got this one online last Halloween, in reissue packaging that seemed to be from Canada. Here's some unboxing pics I saved.

This guy is simply awesome. The articulation is very limited, just two simple joints in the arm plus the head. The material is soft rubber stuff of exactly the kind that ages horribly. And, it's everything a kid or collector could want. Here's some pics of him in full 3-points-of-articulation glory.

And of course, I had to take a pic with the Gas Station Duchess/ Connie, and Cassie!

Hey, this was Plan B in the movie!

And that's enough to wrap this up. This was a fun trip down memory lane, and a chance to put down my thoughts on why my experiences with this franchise weren't the same as other people's. I definitely will be doing more, but haven't quite decided what. For now, I have one more of the kind of toy blog I haven't been doing as much of. That's all for now, more to come!